


Lady's Man

by elviaprose



Category: David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
Genre: In Vino Veritas, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21540637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elviaprose/pseuds/elviaprose
Summary: David decides to give Uriah a taste of his own medicine and get him drunk. It works a little too well, and Uriah spills a few of his deepest secrets, much to the alarm of all parties involved.
Relationships: David Copperfield/Uriah Heep
Comments: 7
Kudos: 14





	Lady's Man

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to x_los for the beta and the brainstorming help. This will hopefully be the first in a series of short fics for this pairing that she's challenged me to write.

_‘Really, Master Copperfield,’ he said, ‘—I should say Mister, but I know you’ll excuse the abit I’ve got into—you’re so insinuating, that you draw me like a corkscrew! Well, I don’t mind telling you,’ putting his fish-like hand on mine, ‘I’m not a lady’s man in general, sir, and I never was, with Mrs. Strong.’_

I could not refuse a drink from David Copperfield’s hand--I never could have refused it, if it had been poison. He smiled, not knowing how to ask anything of anyone without a smile--not even his enemy. Oh, the sparks that turn of his mouth kindled in me! I loved and hated it. That he spoke coldly, it being me he asked and not a proper friend, twisted me up, and yet I always liked him to be a little hard with me, knowing he did it because he felt at a disadvantage with me.

I watched hungrier than a vulture as he poured the wine and gave it to me. What a sight he was, with his soft curls and his dark, quick eyes and his fine green waistcoat. He always looked so bright, so warm and lively. I would have died suffering in the next hour to have had a willing kiss from him, his mouth on mine. He was a little clumsy, knowing I watched him, and spilled a drop. Yes, I had a little power now--though I’d always made him bashful, hadn’t I?

When he asked if I should have a little more, I knew if I didn’t take that cup, I would not have another smile like that one. When I was a boy I found a jar of honey in a forgotten corner of the church cellar, and I knew no one would miss it if I took it for myself. It had gone cloudy and dark and lost a deal of its quality, though it wasn’t spoiled. I was so heated over it not being sweeter that I ate the whole of the jar right up out of spite. I was ill all day from taking so much, and poor Mother fretted herself terribly for me, and never knew the cause. It’s a good deal like that with Copperfield, I suppose. 

After the third cup, I realized that somehow he knew I liked him waiting on me and giving his attentions, and knew he could make me drink past prudence. He certainly considered it just revenge for all I had done to Wickfield in this line. The cruelty that came up in him as I grew drunk was not a horse of the same color as the coldness he’d shown me upon first offering the wine. The hardness he reached up and clutched at, but the cruelty welled in him deep and angry from his heart, in answer to my own bitterness. 

I understood well how he felt. To hate to be mastered, to hate to be hurt. And he did both to me, as I did to him, worse than anyone else did it. It was more than half my own fault, what he did to me--there had never been a time I had not provoked him every way I knew to do it, and it was my own heart that lived and died for him, yet it was hard to forgive him--then or ever.

When Copperfield began asking me about Miss Agnes and what I perceived to be her virtues, I was alive to the danger. Reposing confidences in Copperfield had ever been the chiefest pleasure of my life. Sometimes my professions to him were false, and even then I still loved to do it. I knew I risked telling him more than I ought, for I felt loose and wild and tempted.

“I have never admired any woman, Master Copperfield. Never wanted any woman,” says I. I fully intended to say “save for Agnes Wickfield,” and yet I thought, what if I held there? The moment to speak more stretched long, and I said nothing. And then it was done. I looked into his eyes. If it was pleasant to tell him a lie, it was ten times the pleasure to tell him what was true. 

He regarded me with shock. I think, though he had perceived that I was not so passionately in love with Miss Agnes as I had claimed to him, he had not thought it could be as it was with me--had never thought of it. It was a rare triumph to surprise him so greatly as that. In such moments, his great disdain for me lifted and he merely wondered at me, and put the whole of his mind to what I said. His lips opened just a little. It was a habit I had seen him try to suppress, as he thought it made him look foolish. I thought what if were to lean forward and kiss him, have his mouth, let my hand find his cock in the gentle fall of his pale cream trousers. What if it got a little plump for me before he could think? Now that should certainly be a surprise! 

“Then you ought not to marry,” said Copperfield, after a pause, and his wonderment was done and gone. He always felt more the master if he had some advice to give me, if he could convince himself he knew better, and now he had. I thought he had done speaking, but then he added on, “until you find someone you do admire.” He looked into my eyes with his lovely ones then, and I felt my anger leave me and my chest squeezed like a heavy stone had been laid atop it. I breathed hard. I ground my hands against each other the better to feel what they were, and how hateful to him. He would never want me, never like me. There had never been a time when I had touched him and he had not shuddered at it. I corrected myself as cruelly as I could, for when Copperfield looked directly into my eyes I never could help but forget myself--I think I am no better or worse than any other in this, man or woman. I think no person can have remembered their own faults, however great their number, when eye to eye with a beloved. “If we are speaking frankly, Uriah,” he went on, “can you really not open your heart more fully to the world and its creatures, and admire where you look? When you pursue marriage without such feelings, it--forgive me--makes you odious.”

Many in the world marry without love, yet to Copperfield, who loved so easily and well, it was the worst sin under heaven. I did him the credit of thinking he would have found it odious in anyone, and not only in me.

I counseled myself to say no more. I hugged myself under my chin and begged myself to say no more. Yet I could not humble myself to tell the lie that I had a heart less able to love than his. It had been my intention to allow him to conclude exactly as he had concluded, and yet it was too unjust. 

“Not to any female person,” says I. “But I am not without affections, Master Copperfield, only they don’t incline towards the fairer sex. There is nothing in my soul of the sort that can be inclined that way. Do you think I ought to live my life after my own fashion then, Master Copperfield? Maybe it is for some to do, who are born in a less umble state, but it is not for me, do you think, is it? Who would deny I ought to tame my sinfulness as well as I am able and live in umbleness beyond reproach?”

Copperfield took this in with some thoughtfulness. His eyes moved back and forth, intelligent in his face as he considered. 

“Is there one you love now?”

“There is one, certainly, yes,” says I, with mocking enthusiasm. “Oh, yes, there is one I have ever loved. What do you think I ought to do about it, being made so cruelly awry from what I ought to be? I should like to hear very much what David Copperfield thinks about it!” 

I realized that tears had begun to fall from my eyes, without my knowing it. I felt damp all over and loathsome as a toad. It was the first time I could remember that I had cried before anyone except Mother. I was frightened at myself, yet I felt a bitter gladness, for I thought Copperfield ought to know how perfectly wretched I really could be. 

“I think you ought to go to bed, Uriah,” said Copperfield quietly, his brow drawing into a crease, deeper on the right side than the left. He was still so young, and frowned so little, that he had no lasting lines on his fair face. He was not sure what to do about me, I thought. And yet he still ordered me about! I nearly pitied him, for he was laboring so gamely to make sense of a thing that could not be made sense of. “It is late and you have taken too much wine, and your mind now will not be your mind a few hours hence. In the morning, ask me again for my best opinion--if you still wish to know.”

“Oh, of course,” says I, “of course. You are right, of course.” The suggestion offended me, for I knew he must know he had nothing of merit to say, yet he spoke as if it was out of kindness to me that he did not impart his great wisdom this very night! I might have forced him to admit it, only it was my inbred habit to nurse any offense with my own obedience. I did not so much as think to do otherwise.

He saw me to bed, for I was clumsy as anything, and helped me undress for the night. He did it exceedingly gently. I was hot with fury, and yet still I took every pain to note how it felt to have his cool hand against my throat as he undid my collar for me, for I knew I should never have better than I had just then. When he had done, and I lay in bed, he said,

“I could still be kind to you, Uriah.” 

If he could be he had not showed it yet, for it was the cruelest torture to me in the world, to treat me as he had. That he had spoken to me as he had! Touched me as he had! But he had not seen the last of the subject, I swore. No, he had certainly not seen the last of it now.


End file.
